


Whispers

by spiteandmalice



Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: But In Space, Fluff and Angst, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Techienician, Vaguely based on CA: The Winter Soldier, kylux adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 01:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18681193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiteandmalice/pseuds/spiteandmalice
Summary: It starts with a whisper amongst the Stormtroopers.An assassin, sneaking ship to ship, killing as he goes.





	Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> I've just fallen down the well that is Techienician and can't get out. Help.

It starts with a whisper amongst the Stormtroopers.

An assassin, sneaking ship to ship, killing as he goes.

A lieutenant with his throat cut on the bridge of the  _ Supremacy  _ while his colleagues worked beside him, a major who had a fall from a very secure railing, a bunk of Stormtroopers poisoned, two weapon sergeants found dead inside their still locked weapons store.  

There are only three facts known about this person:

One: He’s partly a man, partly metal

Two: He’s got red hair

Three: Only one person has seen him and survived

Of course, the technician who saw him died shortly after revealing these facts in a mysterious bacta tank accident.

By the time the rumours reach the  _ Finaliser  _ and Matt hears them they’ve changed, morphed and grown the way only rumours can.

Other ships say it’s definitely General Hux, that maybe he’s finally snapped, maybe he got tired of watching death from the bridge of a ship and decided to seek it out, to see his hands drip red. That he’s killing on other ships to ensure his legacy at the top. ‘ _ Maybe next time it’ll be another General killed’  _ and ‘ _ Hux wants to become an Admiral’  _ they whisper to each other. The  _ Finaliser  _ crew are smug about these successes, if their General wants to take the universe one assassination at a time, they’re all behind him. His success is their success. 

When the first mysterious death happens on the  _ Finaliser  _ the rumour changes again. A weapons technician is found impaled onto a crucial console. The crew are unnerved. Hux would never do anything to his crew that didn’t deserve it, or damage his ship. They start to whisper that maybe Lord Ren is controlling him, using him a puppet of destruction. Why else would he kill so randomly? So violently?

Some say it’s a project of Phasma’s, perhaps an elite assassin that she’s clad in metal to mark him as one of her own, or perhaps it’s another FN-branch Stormtrooper whose reconditioning went wrong.

Some say it’s a Force projection or the ghost of Brendol Hux.  

Matt thinks it’s all banthashit. He’s got work to do.

\---

Being a radar technician is repetitive, and lonely, and Matt loves it. 

His after shift routine used to be: go to the gym, maybe hang around a bit if Kylo Ren was there, then go have dinner with Techie if he was finished his shift too. Then they’d go back to Matt’s bunk together, sometimes Techie’s if he’d remembered to clear away whatever project he’d have sprawled across his small space. They weren’t  _ together  _ together officially, but Matt wished they were but he knew they were exclusive, that they spent every mutual off-shift together and that Techie only smiled for him and only trusted him and that had been enough. 

But Techie went missing six months ago. There was an attack on the  _ Finaliser  _ by the Resistance, who uploaded a virus to the mainframe to cripple the ship’s weapons. Techie hadn’t come to dinner that night, but Matt knew something was happening, all the computer techs were missing from the mess hall and there were whispers of problems.

But Techie didn’t come to dinner the next night or the next.

Matt checked his bunk, the computer labs, medical, anywhere he could think of. No Techie. No one had seen him since the attack began.

\---

Techie whispered a fear to Matt once, as they dozed in the afterglow. “Wouldn’t you prefer someone like Lord Ren? He’s powerful and strong. I’m neither of those things.”

In another life Matt might have agreed, he liked strong men who could hold him down and make him beg. But that was before he met Techie and he realised strength took different forms. 

\---

Matt’s watching the load screen for readiness tests on the new relays when he feels like he’s being watched. This isn’t a new feeling, he can often sense Kylo Ren watching him and when that happens Matt tries to think hard about Lord Ren asking him to train with him at the gym and Lord Ren then promptly ignores him and goes about his business. 

When he turns around there’s no one there. He hears a soft ping of metal, the scuff of a boot. He scowls. There’s someone hiding, if they’re creeping around they’re probably up to no good. It could be a Resistance spy for all he knows.   

He puts the datapad on the floor, still connected to the relay and walks around the corner. That corridor is empty too. He rounds the next corner and there’s a cable hanging out of the wall, the wall panel left ajar. He was sure Davy said he’d be working this shift on these starboard side relays too, just like Matt. Davy’s a decent worker, one of the few Matt would even call a friend, and he’d never have left the cable out. Matt pokes it back into the hole and shuts the panel. 

When he comes back to his datapad the loading screen has gone. In place of the standard white and orange relay menu, there’s a text document open, cursor blinking.  

LEAVE THE SHIP MATT

I CAN’T PROTECT YOU

This corridor has no rooms, it’s a dead-end, only used for accessing the outside weapons and communications. And no one has passed him. 

\---

He reports the incident to security but they tell him the camera fuzzed out while he went to explore the noise. No one else saw anything, they’re far enough away from Resistance territory it’s unlikely a spy has been hiding here for days unseen. 

Davy doesn’t show up to the mess that evening.

Davy never returns.

\---

After Techie went missing, his supervisor had his bunk cleared out after two weeks. Matt had been sneaking in every evening to sleep, watching the blinking lights of Techie’s monitors cast colours onto Techie’s little wire animals until he fell asleep in Techie’s bed.

On the night he opened the door and saw everything has been cleared out Matt had smashed the security panel in rage, put his fist right through it and broke his hand. He’d been docked a week’s pay for that. 

He has nothing to remember Techie by and he never realised he could feel so alone.

\---

Matt’s having a really nice dream, Techie is sitting on the chair at the end of his bed, watching over him. He’d come sometimes when their shifts wouldn’t match and work on his datapad while Matt slept beside him. Dream Techie even smells like Techie, like caf and the slightly burnt rubber smell of new hardware running overclocked. Matt smiles into his pillow. He missed this. He missed him.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes and let the dream go, but his shift starts soon and he needs to get across to Deck B. 

He stretches out and reaches for his glasses and stops.

He’s awake. Techie is still there, though very out of focus.

He’d recognize Techie anywhere, even with his hair pulled back? Matt squints. There’s a gleam of metal at his forehead and wrist. 

Matt puts his glasses on quickly, reaches for the lamp’s on-switch but Techie’s gone.

Like a ghost.

\---

Matt sleepwalks through the day. He arrives at Deck B late and gets put on wiring the radar dishes as punishment. 

He wants to deny it was Techie but he  _ knows _ . He knows the same way he knows how to make Techie smile, or moan or blush. 

He reaches into his vest for a smaller mechno-spanner and there’s a note tucked into the vest pocket.

PLEASE

I WARNED YOU

I DON’T WANT YOU HURT

DO NOT STAY ON BOARD TONIGHT

The note wasn’t there last night. It wasn’t a dream.

Techie is alive.

\---

Matt’s supervisor is extra pissed off with him when the shift ends and Matt has to stay behind to make up for his lateness, and therefore his supervisor has to stay too. 

The job would go faster if he helped Matt, but that’s never going to happen.

Matt’s deep in concentration threading a wire through the port when he hears a thud. He looks up, but his supervisor is on the floor unconscious. Next to him is Techie. 

With his glasses on Matt can see Techie’s hair wasn’t pulled back this morning, it’s been shorn, and there are thin rivulets of metal across his head, spilling down to meet one eye and ending under his jacket. 

The eyes are new, still bionic, a more grey shade than before but must they have been implanted properly as the redness around them is gone. Matt hopes they’re comfortable for him.

“I told you to leave”. Techie hisses at him. 

“Where have you been? What happened?”

_ Why did you leave me?  _ he wants to ask. 

“There’s going to be an attack by the Resistance tonight, I’ve tried to warn you. You need to get in a pod and leave, now!”

“We can warn security- get the ‘troopers to patrol, maybe-”

“It’s too late Matt. Their spy is already here.”

“Do you know who it is? We can stop this. Lord Ren can pull their mind apart, find out information-”

Techie looks sad.

“It’s me, Matt. I’m the spy.”

Matt feels light headed. He’s not one of those hardcore First Order followers who would happily die for the cause and slaughter in the name of the Supreme Leader, he’s just a guy who feels they’re on the right side and he’s happy to be part of it. He feels angry that Techie has been lying to him all this time, that he’s been watching them and reporting to the Resistance. That he’d betrayed Matt.

He reaches for his spanner and lunges at Techie. Much to his surprise Techie dodges and pins Matt to the wall with his metal hand. He struggles, but Techie bends his arm until he stops.

“Matt, listen to me. Do you remember the night I vanished? There was a blaster fight outside the main computer lab, I was injured and taken by the Resistance. I woke up a week later with new eyes, new arm and no memories. I’ve been killing targets they need out of the way since, and tonight is going to be the end of it, I’m going to blow the  _ Finaliser  _ out of the sky. The bomb is in place.”

“Why?”

“At first I didn’t know who I was, just that I had to eliminate certain people and destroy certain tech. But when I came to the  _ Finaliser  _ to eliminate the newest radar relays I saw you. And it all came back to me in flashes: who I used to be on-planet, when I joined the First Order, when I met you.”

Techie sobs and drops Matt’s arm. Matt turns and pulls Techie to him.

“I killed a lot of people Matt, so many people.”

Matt feels sick. He’s seen holovids of Lord Ren mowing down people with his lightsaber, but they were bad people who deserved it. Techie went through enough before he even came aboard to give most people nightmares and he still was a good person. And now the Resistance had twisted the only person Matt had ever cared about into their own personal killing machine.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t you. Okay, you killed a few people, but we’re at war-”

“82. I killed 82 people.”

Oh shit. Matt had heard of maybe 15 of those, the higher profile targets or the more unusual deaths.

“I didn’t want to, I swear, I didn’t Matt, I’d just open my eyes and they’d be dead. I didn’t want to.”

Matt hushes him and keeps holding him tightly. 

“I know love, I know. Shh. It’s okay.”

Matt feels Techie tense up.

“Love?” 

Matt could make a joke, just say it’s a turn of phrase but he’s been in pain for the last 6 months and Techie’s here now, safe in his arms. 

“When you were gone, I realised I loved you. I missed you every single day.”

He can’t see Techie’s smile but he can hear it in his voice when he replies “I love you too.”

After a minute they pull apart.

“Right, let’s go save our ship.”

\---

In the end, Matt gets a commendation for his discovery of the bomb and General Hux even thanks him via datapad. Well, it’s a generic  _ ‘the First Order thanks you’ _ message but Matt thinks it counts. 

He gets a minor promotion, so really that means it’s more work for the same pay, but it does come with a bigger bunk. Techie is reinstated and undergoes surgery to remove the tech the Resistance gave him and decides to rest in Matt’s bunk. After a few weeks, Matt realises they’ve accidentally moved in together. The rumours about the ghost get replaced by sniggering about Lord Ren and General Hux, apparently caught in a delicate position in a conference room, and Techie recovers and goes back to work. Matt goes to the gym and they meet for dinner. Life goes on, together. 


End file.
